Reading matters

'The Aran Islands' by J. M. Synge

Non fiction - paperback; Penguin Classics; 208 pages; 1992.

At the turn of the 19th century, Irish poet and playwright John Millington Synge made numerous visits to the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland. He had been encouraged to make his first visit in 1897 by his friend, William Butler Yeats, who told him: "Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression."

I wanted to read this book, because I had imagined it to be one of those oh-so authentic travelogues that would tell me what it was like to live in a remote place at a time when tourism was not commonplace. And that, my friends, is pretty much exactly what I got, along with a healthy dose of fairy stories and some wonderful descriptions of breath-taking scenery.

As Tim Robinson points out in the introduction, the book is completely self-sufficient in the sense that Synge never explains why he went to the Aran Islands nor what impact it was to have on the rest of his life. But we know now that he spent his first summer there shortly after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease (then completely untreatable) and that after his final visit, some five years later, he achieved extraordinary success with his play The Playboy of the Western World first published in 1907, the same year as The Aran Islands was published. He died just two years later.

'The Monster of Florence' by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi

Non-fiction - hardcover; Virgin Books; 336 pages; 2009. REVIEW COPY.

Last year I read an amazing true-crime book called The Vienna Woods Killer: A Writer's Double Life by John Leake about a journalist who reported on the brutal murders he himself had committed. It was one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" books -- and I loved it.

The Monster of Florence is another true-crime book hugely reminiscent of The Vienna Woods Killer. A collaboration between an American crime thriller writer and an Italian investigative journalist, the book traces a series of brutal double-murders in and around the hills of Florence between 1968 and 1985 and then, in a bizarre twist of fate, reveals how the authors themselves became suspects. The fiction writer, Douglas Preston, is interrogated, accused of being an accessory to murder and of planting false evidence, and told to leave the country; the journalist, Mario Spezi, is thrown into jail and accused of being the Monster of Florence himself.

'Leadbelly' by Andrew Rule and John Silvester

Non-fiction - paperback; Blake Publishing; 288 pages; 2005.

Between 1995 and 2004 there were 34 underworld killings in Melbourne, Australia. Yes, 34. I don't think there were that many deaths in six-and-a-half series of The Sopranos and that has to be one of the most violent TV shows ever broadcast.

According to the authors "the size of the death toll varies from source to source because opinions vary about when the 'war' began and who are casualties and who are not". Even the concept of 'war' is disputed, because not all the murders are related, some are simply one-off hits to settle old scores. But police did establish that the bulk of the killings were part of a deadly feud between two rival gangs: the New Boys and the Carlton Crew.

Having followed this string of brutal and bloody murders from afar (I left Australia in mid-1998) via Melbourne's The Age website, I was anxious to read this book to piece all the crimes together in my head as one long narrative. Unfortunately, the book's structure doesn't work like that. Instead, what you get is 29 self-contained chapters that look at each crime in isolation. I imagine they were written like this for newspaper publication, but even so, I found it annoyingly repetitive in places -- explaining who characters are and how they are linked to each other and what terrible crimes they have committed -- which wears very thin very quickly.

And the prose style is terribly tabloid, surprising given that it's written by two journalists for whom I have the utmost respect (Andrew Rule's Strict Rules, a non-fiction account of his time touring the outback and staying with aboriginal communities, is extraordinarily good and worth tracking down if you get a chance, while Silvester's day-to-day reporting for The Age on the crimes covered in Leadbelly has been thorough, tenacious and imminently readable over the course of this ongoing gangland feud). Still, I wonder how much of this "dumbed down" style is simply a reflection of the market to which this book is aimed. It's not so much sloppily written, but it's riddled with unwarranted editorialising that I found patronising.

'Petite Anglaise' by Catherine Sanderson

Non-fiction - hardcover; Penguin; 340 pages; 2008.

Petite Anglaise is one of those books that first started life as a blog -- the refreshingly well written and entertaining Petite Anglaise -- except this is not a collection of posts strung together to form a disjointed narrative. Instead it's a proper memoir that charts Catherine Sanderson's life in Paris as an expat Brit.

Despite its (not particularly attractive) chick-lit cover, the story deals with some fairly weighty subject matter, not the least Catherine's decision to leave her long-term partner (dubbed Mr Frog) and the father of her child (dubbed Tadpole), because she'd embarked on an affair with someone who left comments on her blog! Saucy, no?

But the book also charts a love affair with Paris, a city that Catherine became obsessed about when she was an 11-year-old school girl in Yorkshire.

France. Here was a destination to bend my running steps towards; a hook to hang my daydreams on; so alluring, so exotic, so tantalizingly close. No matter that school French lessons consisted of little more than endlessly rehearsed role plays and verb conjugations. No matter that my first extended stay on French soil would not take place for another six agonizing years. As I sat in a numbered booth in the school language lab, cumbersome headphones blocking out the English sounds of the world around me, I closed my eyes and pretended I was actually there. I yearned to taste the 200 grams of pâté I was instructed to buy in the grocer's shop; to visit the church or the town hall after quizzing a passer-by -- invariably an elderly man wearing a beret -- for directions. 'Ecoutez, puis répétz!' said the voice on the crackling tape at the start of every exercise. 'Listen, then dream' would have been more apt. I'd fallen hopelessly, irrationally, in love with the French language and, by extension, with France. And I'm at a loss to explain why, even now.

'Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North' by Stuart Maconie

Non-fiction - paperback; Ebury Press; 368 pages; 2008. 

The North-South divide in Great Britain is the subject of this rather tongue-in-cheek travelogue by Northern journalist and broadcaster Stuart Maconie.

For non-Brits, the divide is not an exact line, but one which refers to the economic and cultural differences between southern England and the rest of the country, including Scotland. It involves many stereotypes, including the belief that Northerners are thick and Southerners are posh. Or, as Maconie, a Northerner transplanted to the South, puts it:

Good or bad, 'the north' means something to all English people wherever they hail from. To people from London -- cheery costermonger, cravated fop or Shoreditch-based web designer on stupid scooter alike -- it means desolation, arctic temperatures, mushy peas, a cultural wasteland with limited shopping opportunities and populated by aggressive trolls. To northerners it means home, truth, beauty, valour, romance, warm and characterful people, real beer and decent chip shops. And in this we are undoubtedly biased, of course.

The enchantingly entitled Pies and Prejudice takes us on a wonderful tour of the North, with the erudite and charming Maconie as our host. Having watched Maconie on a many a TV show, I couldn't help but hear his Wigan accent as I read this book, which made the experience all the more enjoyable. (Indeed, I hope that at some point he turns it into a documentary series, as it would make fascinating viewing.)

'Thirteen Tonne Theory: Life Inside Hunters and Collectors' by Mark Seymour

Non-fiction - paperback; Viking; 391 pages; 2008.

If you are an Australian of a certain age and are a fan of pub rock, then chances are you have seen Hunters and Collectors perform live. And if you have seen them perform live then you no doubt know that this band is one of the most visceral live acts -- second only to Midnight Oil -- to ever come out of the Southern Hemisphere.

This book, written by lead singer Mark Seymour (who also happens to be the older brother of Crowded House's bass player Nick Seymour), provides an inside look at what it was like fronting this powerhouse of a band for 18 years.

Of course, if you haven't already guessed by now, I am a longtime Hunters and Collectors fan. But funnily enough, I always preferred seeing them live than listening to their records, which never seemed to convey the sheer velocity and passion of the music when performed in concert. In fact, this view of the band is not a unique one: they were critically acclaimed but never quite achieved the commercial success that comes so easily to other bands that do far less hard graft.

The book, which is currently only available in Australia (my sister gave me this copy when she visited me in London a couple of months ago), does help explain why the band was big in Australia but failed to crack the UK or American markets. Set up as an artistic collective, in which every member of the eight-piece band shared songwriting copyright and royalties, the decision-making process did not allow anyone to take the lead, nor did it allow the goal of commercial superstardom to become the over-riding aim. Seymour makes no bones about how frustrating this became, especially when, as lead singer, he was seen as the "face" of the band and its key lyricist.

At times the story reads a bit like a kid who has thrown the toys out of the pram. Seymour clearly thinks the band and, more importantly, himself deserved better. But he is also incredibly candid and so hard on himself that you kind of feel sorry for him.

I particularly liked his account of the band's early days in London, where they were on the cusp of international success, only to blow it all when one member who'd had too much to drink insulted the record company. This incident -- in a curry house in Shepherd's Bush -- would be laugh-out-loud funny if it weren't for the painful financial repercussions that followed. You get the sense that Hunters and Collectors never quite recovered from this monumental error.

All in all, Thirteen Tonne Theory (the name comes from the weight of equipment the band took on the road when they toured up and down the country) is an intriguing read. Written by a singer that crafted so many Australian anthems -- Talking to a Stranger, Say Goodbye, Throw Your Arms Around Me and The Holy Grail -- it's a wonderful, if slightly worthy, warts-and-all account that fans will find fascinating.

'Digging Up the Dead: Uncovering the Life and Times of an Extraordinary Surgeon' by Druin Burch

Non-fiction - paperback; Vintage; 276 pages; 2008. Review copy.

I have read some interesting and unusual books in my time, but Druin Burch's Digging Up the Dead must be the most interesting and unusual book I have ever read. Indeed, when I was offered it for review, I had initially been drawn to the dark, Gothic nature of the subject, but hadn't quite clocked the fact it was a non-fiction title. So when it popped through my door I was slightly taken aback to discover that it was actually a biography. But what a biography it turned out to be!

Digging Up the Dead looks at the life and times of arguably the world's first famous surgeon, Astley Cooper (1768-1841), whom Burch -- himself a medical doctor -- describes as vain, egotistical, nepotistic and "rather wonderful".

Astley was born into a highly educated family -- his father was an Oxford-educated vicar, his uncle was senior surgeon at Guy's Hospital in London -- but he showed little interest in books or study but specialised in pranks and adventures. When the family moved to Yarmouth he began training under a local apothecary, who also doubled as a surgeon, in the hope that he might learn enough to follow his older brothers into university and perhaps a physicianship, or his uncle to a hospital and career as a surgeon. He did well and moved on to become an apprentice to a surgeon at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.

When he was fourteen-and-a-half he witnessed a problematic, but successful, operation to remove a stone from a man's bladder. This was to have a profound influence on him, because it was not long after that he decided to embark on surgical training in London, much to the delight of his family.

'Eden' by Tim Smit

Non-fiction - paperback; Corgi; 286 pages; 2002.

The Eden Project is a series of man-made biomes built in a disused clay pit in Cornwall, England. One of the British Government's much-lauded Millennium Projects, it opened to critical acclaim in 2001 and has been on my list of places to visit for many years.

Designed to educate the public about plants and our dependence on them, it features the world's biggest conservatories, the first of which emulates a tropical environment, the second a warm temperate Mediterranean environment. Both biomes are made out of "bubbles" -- sturdy plastic, air-filled hexagons -- which interlock to form a series of gigantic greenhouses that are home to thousands of plants from across the world.

I visited the complex last month and was so in awe of its scale and beauty that I purchased this book, by the project's founder, in the souvenir shop because I was keen to learn more about the project's inception and difficult birth.

'Things the Grandchildren Should Know' by Mark Oliver Everett

Non-fiction - hardcover; Little Brown; 256 pages; 2008.

To survive the tragic deaths of your entire family is one thing, to become a critically acclaimed musician is another, and yet  44-year-old Mark Oliver Everett has done both. Now, with the release of this memoir, he can also added talented author to the list.

Everett, better known as 'E' from the Eels, an alternative rock band which is essentially Everett and an ever-changing cast of musicians, seems to be the current flavour of the month here in the UK. He recently starred in a BBC 4 documentary called Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives about his father, the late quantum physicist Hugh Everett III, who was the originator of the many-worlds theory. Then his book was published and just last week he played a special gig at St James's Church in Piccadilly to promote it.

'The Amazing Adventures of Diet Girl' by Shauna Reid

  Non-fiction - paperback; Corgi; 400 pages; 2008.

"I've got the biggest knickers in Australia."

So begins Shauna Reid's refreshingly candid, often humorous and hugely inspirational The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl, which charts her seven-year battle with the bulge.

Shauna's story, which first appeared in blog form, is an entertaining read reminiscent of Bridget Jones Diary. It is not a typical diet book. There are no recipes, no quick-and-easy solutions to fighting the flab. Instead it's an enthralling novel-like narrative that follows Shauna's ups and downs as she struggles to lose 12-and-a-half stone.

She battles depression, curbs her secret food binges and learns to love the gym. Along the way she finds the courage to backpack to the other side of the world and nabs herself a Scottish husband in the process.

I loved this book and kept turning the pages well into the early hours of the morning. It's enormously moving in places, but any sense of self-pity is tempered by a self-deprecating sense of humour which had me laughing out loud more than once.

The beauty of this book is that it shows how it is possible to achieve anything if you set your mind to it.  Shauna's steely determination to succeed and years of hard work paid off handsomely in the end. For that reason alone The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl should be required reading for anyone wanting to change any aspect of their life who lacks the courage to do so. It's already made me want to cut my caffeine intake and ride my bicycle more often!